


Pray for Rain

by Tousled_Sky



Category: The Fault in Our Stars - John Green
Genre: Cancer, Child Death, Diary/Journal, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Terminal Illnesses
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-03
Updated: 2020-10-03
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:42:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26796802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tousled_Sky/pseuds/Tousled_Sky
Summary: It’s strange, when you know you have no future, how often you find yourself thinking of the past.
Kudos: 2





	Pray for Rain

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by:  
> 1) The film Sicko directed by Micheal Moore.  
> 2) Watching the Coronavirus pandemic unfold in the States as almost everyone I know lost their jobs, their insurance, and their access to healthcare.  
> 3) My own personal experiences with this political circus our "leaders" somehow label as a healthcare system.

**_June_ **

I’ve never kept a diary before. I wouldn’t be keeping this one, if it wasn’t my “homework”, as my therapist puts it. I guess I’ll have plenty of time to write it; I stopped going to school last year, so this fake homework won’t be taking any time away from my real homework.

I never thought I'd say it, but I miss school. It's strange, because when I was younger, I would have done _anything_ to get out of going to school. I used to be so dramatic about it, whine and cry when summer ended and school started back up. I remember telling my mom I would rather die than go back to school.

Of course it was hyperbole, even back then. Still, it makes me a little sick to remember, because in the end, that’s exactly what happened. I stopped going to classes because the doctors told us I was dying.

Man, fuck this. What’s the point of keeping a stupid diary when I’ll be dead in a few months anyways. Fuck all this.

\---

I hate going places now.

Like the mall. I used to love going to the mall with friends; we would tease each other about crushes, get iced coffee, and try on clothes from every store we could visit in a two or three hour window, before our parents picked us back up.

It’s not like that anymore. Now, I have to wheel my oxygen tank with me everywhere I go. I’m weaker, and walking the whole mall takes so much out of me. Every twenty minutes I have to find a bench, sit there and catch my breath. People either stare at me or avert their eyes as they go past; like I don’t exist at all.

I used to feel unseen as a kid; like I was so normal that I just blended in with everyone else. I never thought I’d miss being ordinary so much.

Driving to and from the mall is awful, too. This summer has been the hottest I can ever remember. Apparently, it's the hottest on record, if what the newscasters are saying is anything to go by. I dread getting in the car; the temperature in there is always about a billion degrees, and the steering wheel feels burning hot in my hands when I touch it. It makes me nervous to put my oxygen tank in the car now, too; pressurized oxygen and high temperatures don’t exactly play nicely together.

When I first got sick, I made more of an effort to go out, but as the months have dragged on, I’ve been staying in more and more; it’s such a pain to go out that it hardly seems worth it most days. My parents try to get me out of the house more often; they encourage me to go to the mall with friends, go for a walk outside, go to church with them. I really do try; I want to make these last few months enjoyable, after all, but it seems like the only place I ever go anymore is to the doctor for chemo or to the therapist.

I hate being sick. I hate all of this.

\---

It’s strange, when you know you have no future, how often you find yourself thinking of the past.

My therapist is always talking about being “mindful” and “living in the moment”, and I do try to, but oftentimes my mind will wander, and I’ll suddenly realize I’ve spent the last half hour thinking about my earlier years.

I think back a lot to how different my life used to be. Back before my lungs were full of cancer, before I had to drag a tank with me everywhere I went, before I had to wonder if this year would be my last.

Back before I ever had to question the price of a life.

I guess that’s what really pisses me off, out of all of this. Why I’m still so angry, even after that initial stage of grief had passed (yes, I know that they’re not linear, and that you can “slide back and forth” between them, but I know this isn’t the grief talking).

What really gets to me, out of all of this? It’s that I never had to die. This isn’t the kind of situation where there’s nothing the doctors can do. In fact, the hospital recommended us a surgery that has an 85% success rate, a surgery that patients rarely relapse from. They told my parents and I that since I was so young, and since they’d caught the cancer fairly early, that my chances were even higher than the average. All I had to do was get the surgery, and I’d likely be cancer-free for the rest of my life.

Then the insurance company sent us the out-of-pocket costs for my treatment.

I’ll never forget when my mom opened it. How she wouldn’t let me see the letter, how forced her smile was when she told me not to worry, how her hands shook as she held that damned piece of paper.

That night, I heard a sound behind my parents’ door, and being nosey and curious, I tiptoed to the door to see if I could hear what they were talking about. When I got closer, I realized she wasn’t talking; she was crying. I still remember the sudden rush of clarity and understanding in that moment; the second I realized that I wasn’t going to get the surgery. I wasn’t going to get better.

No. I was going to die. All because some jackass at the insurance company put a price on my life that we just couldn’t afford.

I never had to die. But I’m dying anyways.

I still can’t quite figure out why.

\---

When I was a little kid, I had a speech impediment. It was pretty severe; my parents were the only people who could understand me, and had to be translators for me whenever I would try to talk to anyone else.

I had to go to a speech therapist for about a year. I was super young; it was before I even started kindergarten. I actually had to delay starting kindergarten because of it; my parents knew the teachers probably wouldn’t be able to understand me with the way I talked. I hardly remember it, but my parents tell me it took a lot of effort and time for me to overcome it.

I do remember getting braces. I got them put on in sixth grade. The first day I went to school with the braces on, a boy in my class laughed at me and said I had “train-track teeth”, and I cried so hard the teacher had to send me to the nurse’s office. They hurt like hell to get tightened, and I had to keep them on for two years. They were such a pain, and I was so relieved when they finally came off.

I think about things like that a lot, now. Think back to all the different people who helped me along to this point in life; all the time and effort they put into making me into a member of society, all the work they put into helping me towards adulthood.

I wonder what they’d think, now. How my old next-door neighbor who taught me how to tie my shoes when I was six would feel if she knew I would never live to see eighteen. What my fifth-grade teacher who tutored me after school until I finally understand how to multiply fractions would think if she knew the only reason I was dying was because my family couldn’t afford the six-digit price tag placed on my life.

How would the community who watched and helped me grow, who taught me and learned from me, feel if they knew it was all for nothing, because I’ve got less than a year to live? How would they feel, knowing all the work they put into helping to shape a human being would end in an early death? More than that, an early death that was _entirely preventable_?

I would be angry.

I already am.


End file.
